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Lily and I both worked very hard today to try to get on top of things. Lily made huge progress on the children’s music with them, and also got the house looking really nice. I plowed into my work. With all of our pushing and dealing with a large blow-up with Mary during her music practice (but Mary rallied and finished a great practice with Lily!), Lily and I were both exhausted by 6:00. We started watching “Being the Ricardos” together, and then I rallied and fed the kids and played Sleeping Queens with the younger kids while Lily watched “Cheer” with Lydia.

Today I woke up and was fortunate to find availability for Swathi and I to get a 3-hour private ski lesson at Sundance today. She was hoping to ski on this trip, and I’ve been dying for a lesson, so it was perfect for us. We booked it at 7:45 and we were out of the house by 8:20.

The ski lesson was awesome. I took a whole page of notes after the lesson to try to remember what I learned. Both Swathi and I grew leaps and bounds. It was the first formal lesson I’ve ever had skiing, and it gave me such great fundamentals to work from going forward. I also went off the ski jump twice and fell both times, but I was grateful to get over my fear of it, and I’m excited to work on that going forward as well. Also, Swathi was awesome company and we both had a good time. She’s still processing the huge news of her job offer which she will likely take as it is a pretty big change for her and her family. It’s a positive change, but still a lot to think through.

While Swathi and I were skiing, Clark was hiking Y mountain with Basil which was a total gift because Basil really needed exercise.

Swathi and I picked up Georgia on our way home and it was so fun all hanging out together. It was great chatting with Georgia, and we all took it really easy, which was really nice because we have been quite active. The kids literally played together all day and it was adorable to watch them. They played games together such as “the ground is lava” so they would need to get around balancing on pillows, baseboards, couches etc. I think they also played a game of dinosaurs and dinosaur catcher or something like that until someone got hurt and they stopped. But they had a tremendous amount of fun, and they were super low maintenance to take care of as they entertained themselves with each other for so much of the day (basically whenever they weren’t eating).

Also, Clark taught us a lot about Cryptocurrency, and he even gave Lydia an incredible lecture not only on Cryptocurrency, but also on the fictional nature of money. Lily was enthralled and videoed part of it.

Also, our sweet Clarissa was very delicate today. Lily put her down early because she was basically falling apart emotionally, but before she went down, she gave us a great gem of a video. When Clarissa was crying upstairs, Lily went to help her and then called for me to come with my phone. I arrived just in time to video Clarissa explaining that she physically could not apologize to Soren because the words, “I’m sorry” were too painful for her throat. We couldn’t help but laugh. Clarissa’s antics were very convincing.

I called her out for making things up, and then Lily was nice enough to put her to bed, but I have to admit, I was also charmed by her bad behavior.

In the morning we all got the kids ready and pulled out before 9am so we could drive three and a half hours to Bryce Canyon National Park. Clarissa didn’t want pig tails or a pony tail, but asked for a unicorn hairdo (a unicorn tail?), so this is what I gave her.

Abe had been visualizing this day trip all week to get him through work stress. We all loved the hike from Sunrise Point to Sunset Point and Queen’s Garden in the middle. Afterward Abe took Basil on a quick 1 mile walk on the rim trail.

We listened to Just Mercy in our car. Lydia requested a lot of Sia in the car with Swathi, Clark and Meera. It was a fun drive!

After all the drama with ballroom, the kids went and won their competitions on Friday. I was floored. Mary, Ammon and Clarissa (who constitute half of their class) took first in their division. Lydia got first place for one of her songs and second for the other. I apologized to the kids for almost withdrawing them against their will and committed to at least finishing out the year. They all love ballroom, so they were happy.

The actual competition day was not as bad as I thought it would be. Getting the girls’ hair done was the hard part, and Abe helped tremendously by running around to four different stores to find hair nets, more scrunchies, and more gel.

Then Soren joined us and we all drove to Farmington. The event was held in a big arena and was surprisingly easy to navigate. The kids were really well-behaved and it was actually kind of fun sitting in the stands watching all of the dances.

Then I took the kids to Noodles and Company before dropping Lydia off at voice lessons and coming back home. Then we left the kids with the babysitter while the adults all went to Pizzeria 712 for dinner. We had the greatest time chatting and then went to Rockwell Ice Cream after for dessert.

When we got home we watched the documentary Cheer, because Clark said the culture might be similar to ballroom. We loved it!

On Thursday we got up very early to get ready for family pictures. I had not planned outfits ahead so needed a LOT of time to figure that out and get myself ready. Clark brought my mom over so she could be in the pictures.

Sarah arrived at 8am and took pictures of all of us together. It is always fun to take family pictures, and I realized as we were taking them that we need to make sure to do this annually. Sarah is my favorite photographer and I am genuinely confused why we have not only taken pictures with her in the past. I think maybe some years she has been unavailable. Going forward we are only going to use her!

After pictures we raced the kids to school and came home to pick up the remaining kids (Soren, Meera, and Clarissa) for an afternoon at Color Me Mine.

After that we picked up lunch at Kneaders and then headed home to rest a little bit before picking up the rest of the kids from school. They came home and played all together before we headed out for sushi at the Happy Sumo.

Afterward we split up. The older girls and I joined Amy and her girls for the BYU production of As You Like It. Abe went home to get all of the costumes to turn in because we decided to withdraw from ballroom. And everyone else went to the Mighty Baker to decorate cupcakes.

At night, Mary recapped the play:

In the morning I made borscht in preparation for Clark’s family’s arrival.

Then I took Basil on a walk. I found this loose piece of concrete that almost flipped up when I stepped on it, so I called the city about it and they fixed it the next day. That made me feel so proud of Orem. They were so responsive!

Ammon has enjoyed acting like a ninja:

After everyone arrived at the house the kids stayed up late playing while the grown-ups chatted. My favorite part was watching Swathi literally light up while talking about her passion for hematology!

We arrived at Big Springs by 9am, which was a big accomplishment for us on a Sunday! It was totally iced over but still fun. I went ahead with Basil while Abe and the kids played behind in some trees. By the time I crossed a big meadow into the aspen forest, it was so beautiful. I wanted to keep going but realized I had the car keys and that if Abe or the kids got cold, they would be shivering.

After we hiked and did some errands, I went out to Death on the Nile with my friend Courtney. It was so fun I wondered why I don’t go to the movies more often. And then I remembered that I live in a gun-heavy part of a gun-heavy state, and I am scared of mass shootings. But we survived and had fun!

After the movie we had home church. Our pastor, Tyler, came, along with a local BYU student. She blew me away with her thoughtfulness, insight and loving-kindness. Abe and I adore providing safe shelter for people going through the difficult experience of faith transition, and it was an honor to hear her story.

After she left we hung out with Tyler and ate fondue and snacks until 8pm. Then Abe and I put down the kids and watched our new favorite show, Chef’s Table. It is so spectacular!

Lily and I were both unbelievably tired today. I was grateful when Nick called and wanted to go get food together because I knew I would enjoy getting out of the house and seeing him. He’s still going through a really rough time and I think the outing did us both good.

While I was on my outing, Lily was chatting with our neighbor, Charity, and helping Lydia get ready for her dance performance (Lydia wore an Olaf costume), and she drove her to the performance. Lily and I are both overwhelmed by how many performances Lydia has. We had no idea of how big of a commitment it was when we signed up. She had 7 or 8 performances this week and would needed to miss school to attend all of them. We only got her to one performance and we think her teacher isn’t too happy about that.

When I got home, I worked for about an hour on figuring out a place from which to purchase the trees we want planted this year. The lady at Cook’s was so nice and also recommended a landscaper who could plant for less money than what they charge. I wanted to go through Highland Gardens since they originally were the ones that had someone come out and recommend trees (hence the map), but they don’t open until March 1 and I wanted to get the ball rolling and they are farther away. I was so impressed with Cook’s that we are going to go through them.

Then I picked up Lydia for her dance performance and came home. Later, I dropped Lydia off at a Valentines party with her friends. Then I bought Valentines with the kids for their classmates. Mary was unsatisfied with the Cheerio valentines I got everyone else, and she got candies that she could put in red saran wrap individually for each kid in her class. Below is her working on her valentines. While I ran those errands Lily swam for an hour. We were both so tired all day, and had to push ourselves to do any type of activity. We took it slow, but still did some things.

In the evening, I tidied the house for a couple of hours while Lily picked up Lydia from her party and did some grocery shopping. We all had delicious lasagna for dinner and Lydia beamed about how fun her party was.

At night, Clarissa was using her heater/AC remote like it was a phone and she had a lot of fun pretending to talk to someone. I took a video: